One of the great trends of the last decade has been the move toward employee “self-service” models. We make our own travel reservations, and provision our own web applications, for example. It’s a positive trend, providing greater transparency, and lowering costs. And, this trend is a key to helping companies manage their costs appropriately.

It’s not surprising to see companies now wanting to move away from expensive operator-assisted conference calls. For many uses, operator assist is simply inappropriate, and even for the use cases where it’s still common – corporate earnings calls, for example – it may not be necessary. Web-based controls, such as those provided by Callbridge help companies take back control of their calls from the operator. Provisioning is done with a self-service model. In addition, with controls such as mute and unmute, hand raise and lower to give the floor to third parties, and the ability to record calls at no additional charge, Callbridge offers IT departments all the capabilities of an operator-assisted conference call, without incurring the burden of user configuration requests, questions and cost associated with an operator-assisted conference call. Moreover, if a presentation is required during the call, it can be shown simultaneously using Callbridge’s document sharing feature.

The transition away from operator-assisted conference calls to self-serve with Callbridge can be nearly seamless. And with flat-rate pricing and web-based management, Callbridge brings a level of transparency and predictability to conferencing expenses that haven’t been possible until now.